Where commercial air impingement tunnel ovens are utilized and arranged in vertically stacked arrays of two or more baking cases, kitchen employees operating such ovens are often presented with difficulties and impediments which interfere with or disrupt their proper usage of the ovens. Such ovens typically present multiple switches and controls for actuation of the ovens' burner ignitors and valves. Also, such ovens typically present multiple switches and controls for actuation of the oven's tunnel traversing conveyors, and they further present multiple switches and controls for actuation of the oven's impingement air fans. Such ovens typically are equipped with additional controls for the actuation of the oven's exhaust fan. Such typical oven's presentation of such multiple and varied controls often results in the improper settings, improper control, and improper operation of the stacked ovens.
Upon such employee operator's proper setting and actuation of the controls of such multiply stacked air impingement tunnel ovens, further drawbacks and deficiencies are typically encountered upon the employee's actuation of the oven's exhaust fans. Such fans are typically set to operate at a speed which properly vents a lowermost oven in the vertical oven stack. In common usage, and during low cooking output demand situations, only an uppermost oven in the vertical stack may be actuated, heated, and utilized. In such circumstances, vertically directed air flow upwardly drawn by the exhaust fan and vertically crossing such uppermost oven's food passage ports often exceeds the air speed and flow volume needed for proper ventilation of the uppermost oven. Such excess air flow creates undesirable and excessive Bernoulli effects at such upper food passage ports, resulting in increases in aspiration of heated cooking gases and undesirably degrading the cooking performance of such uppermost oven.
The instant inventive vertically stacked air impingement tunnel oven solves or ameliorates the problems, challenges, and deficiencies discussed above by providing specialized combined switching of the blower fan, conveyer motor, electronic heater actuator and exhaust fan components of the oven, and by integrating as a part of such switching capability, variable, automatic, and presetable exhaust fan speed control.